'Sealander's The Failed Century of the Child is simultaneously accessible and scholarly. The text is highly engaging, free from the dryness of many academic tomes. … Sealander provides us with an extremely useful compendium. The book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate courses in history, child welfare, social policy, social work, and political science. It is also likely to be of interest to practitioners, policy makers and academics in those same fields.' Youth and Policy
Part I. Children's Welfare: 1. Juvenile justice: from 'child saving' to 'public accountability'; 2. 'The Pontius Pilate' routine: government responses to child abuse; 3. 'Illusory promises': state aid to poor children; Part II. Children's Work: 4. 'Inducting into adulthood': state reactions to the labor of children and adolescents; Part III. Children's Education: 5. 'Laying down principles in the dark': the consequences of compulsory secondary education; 6. The return of the infant school: twentieth century preschool education; 7. Public education of disabled children: 'rewriting one of the saddest chapters'; Part IV. Children's Health: 8. 'Shaped up' by the state: government attempts to improve children's diets, exercise regimes, and physical fitness; 9. Mandatory medicine: twentieth century childhood immunization.